La Petite Fille de Janvier
by The Hart and Hound
Summary: Nowhere do they ask after you. Anveena and Korialstrasz.


Title: La Petite Fille de Janvier

Author: tsubaki-hana

Series: Warcraft

Rating: T

Disclaimer: Warcraft belongs to Blizzard Entertainment.

Summary: Nowhere do they ask after you. (Anveena and Korialstrasz.)

* * *

1

Anveena would sometimes pretend that she felt the same way that Kalec did, smilingly pleasant and proud of herself. Sitting across the room from Korialstrasz as she was, she did not feel this way at all. The dragon disguised himself well, old and ageless despite his mage's appearance. If she did not feel a measure of gratitude and bitterness with him, she would have liked to know him better.

"He made me, like the seamstresses in Silvermoon made my dress." she said to Kalec, flitting her fingers across the front of her dress. Her rough fingernails snag on a stitch around the collar. The Sin'dorei have been kind to her, given her soft tunics and braid her hair away from her face when she deigns to ask them. They are not soft-spoken, hardly ever, and sometimes the harshness of their voices belies the gentility of their hands. But Anveena knew they meant well. Sometimes, anyway.

"They use thread to make shirts," she said. "He uses alchemy and the arcane to make young women."

Kalec swirled wine in a goblet in a pale white hand, one that she knew explodes into talons and scales and all manner of sharp things. She would be scared of him if she didn't know him so completely.

He had a deceptively soft face. Anveena envied him his duplicity. She is as open and bare as parchment.

"You're not just another toy, you know. You have feelings, even if you do hold the Sunwell's power. Your individuality is a gift, a growth of sorts that was encouraged by your magic." He held her hand then, smoothing his gloves over the veins in her hand. She did not feel it, not the way that she could have when she is not so fey at heart.

Her heart is very nearly bursting with love for the blue-dragon man, but keeps it to herself. That way, it can solely be hers, and the Sunwell can be theirs. This seems fair.

She spilled ink once on her father's correspondence once. It is a real memory, even if a contrived moment. She is fine with that. She had apologized profusely, very nearly cried at her clumsiness. He had patted her on the back and sent her out of the room with a handkerchief and a gentle word or two. She did not know he would not send it because he had no one to send it to. She didn't even know his name.

She wondered if Korialstrasz had been the one to make him so kind. She wished he had been cruel instead. It would be easier to say goodbye to the illusion then.

"He makes things for me." said Anveena. "So I suppose it's okay."

* * *

2

The morning twilight was grey and cold and that was plenty for Anveena, wading into a copper tub of hot water and milk. The elves make it their load to keep her as youthful as them. She had told them it was unnecessary. "I'm not even a real human," she had said, guilelessly. It had stopped bothering her like it had before. "There's no need to go to any effort for me."

But she waded into the water all the same, chill and pink in the air. She couldn't see herself through the swirls of white, which was fine, it was best, so that she couldn't see her legs and waist in the sparse light she is afforded by a jeweled lamp.

Anveena felt heat in a way not unlike one feels clothes. It brushed against her, but it did not permeate or surround, like there was just enough enchantment left in her body to let her feel in waves. She imagined that Korialstrasz, a dragon aspect's courtier but not a dragon aspect, could not manage much better than that. She would thank him all the same next time she saw him. She should not exist the way she does at all, and she gratefully reminded herself of that, pinching toes between her fingers.

She existed firmly enough to feel, and she would remind herself that this should be more than she could ever ask for.

Feeling the warmth and tenderness of her shoulder, arm, breast, belly, hip, thigh, she couldn't imagine what it would be like to not feel at all. To be the Sunwell.

Anveena was careful not to think about when the Sin'dorei might ask her to be that for them.

* * *

3

"I am sorry that I cannot do more," he said, Korialstrasz that is, wearing the robes of the Kirin Tor and looking very noble. He had a perfectly sloped nose, the kind she had seen in statues and on occasion in the nobility of Silvermoon, but not more often than that. Anveena appreciated his attention to detail. He matched his surroundings and was beautiful all at once. "I am only what I am, and that is without the aid of my queen, Alexstrazsa." This he said like a prayer, a hymn, a poem. Anveena had read a few of these when her elven friends brought her books. Kalec had taught her to read in his many visits to see her. She wished she read better. She still couldn't write.

"Oh, don't trouble yourself," she said in earnest. "I will do just fine while you go. Lor'themar and Kalec stay with me when you are not near, and I always have my reading to do. Kalec might start me off on the other half of my letters today."

He made a face, not unlike a wince. Anveena thought it was a touch of anger, but she felt her throat unclench. Korialstrasz wished she would learn less, perhaps. Be more pliable and soft like the golem that she technically was. He regretted it from time to time, and that is why he truly winced when he did. It would be harder for him to return her to the Sunwell the more human she became.

"Your form weakens when I leave, I know that it does," he added. "I feel a little fuller when we are apart. There is enough of your own magic to sustain if you truly wished it, but I do not know how directly you can tap beneath the facade when you are like this," he nodded at her.

"I don't, tap the magic that is. I don't really need it." she said.

"Then be safe," said he.

The facade, he said, and Anveena thought as he became a flurry of flame and red mirrored scales, hot and burning to the touch where Kalec is cool and smooth like water. The facade, like she is the fake. She smiled and laughed anyway.

It was very cold and thin, whatever 'it' was, when Korialstrasz left. Anveena wrote the letter 's' until it sounded less like the sound of his flying away in her head. He was what kept her real, but she would be whatever she wanted to be when he was here to define her form and shape.

The Sunwell was warm in her chest, and it did not waver like her own sense of feeling. Anveena was joyful in the sudden heat.


End file.
